


Made It This Far

by story_monger



Series: You're The Only North Star (Platonic VLD Week) [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Disability, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 05:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10075310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: Sometimes, Shiro felt like his bad days outnumbered the good ones. Sometimes, he suspected that healing was not actually some end goal, but a thing to be practiced.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Platonic VLD Week
> 
> Day 1 (Feb. 26): Sunlight / Moonlight  
> Day 2 (Feb. 27): Quiet / Chaos  
> Day 3 (Feb. 28): Lions / Bonding  
> Day 4 (Mar. 1): Enemies / Family  
> Day 5 (Mar. 2): Got your back / Don’t let go  
>  **Day 6 (Mar. 3): Injury / Healing**  
>  Day 7 (Mar. 4): Free Day / AU

It wasn’t one of the good days.

To be frank, sometimes Shiro had a hard time deciding what constituted a good day. It felt like most days had something, some moment, that made the others’ glances linger a little too long, or worse, made them look at him with hesitance, with pity, with something edging on fear. Their attention crawled under his skin and sat there, sulking and growing infectious.

It should have been a good day. The castle ship was quietly floating in empty space, somewhere between stars, while they took a day for maintenance. The training in the morning was almost casual, mostly consisting of runs through the maze and a few spars with the gladiator. Old, comfortable exercises that were more about reinforcing the team’s cohesiveness than about truly challenging anyone.

Shiro was standing with Keith and Pidge while they watched Hunk and Lance complete the maze. Hunk was on the ground, Lance in the box. The pair of them had quickly turned the exercise into an opportunity to entertain, shooting wisecracks and ridiculous jokes between one another like a tennis match. Pidge kept giggling, and even Keith’s mouth quirked up every time Lance gave Hunk directions in the most tortured Cockney accent Shiro had ever heard.

When Hunk reached the other end of the maze, and while Lance whooped with triumph, Shiro turned to Keith and Pidge.

“We’ll have Keith in the maze, Pidge in the box. Sound okay?”

“Sure,” Pidge said. She smirked and jostled Keith with her elbow. “Eh, guv? Wot wot.”

Keith let out a surprised snort. Suppressing his own grin, Shiro turned to the maze again.

And things slid.

And suddenly Keith was in the middle of the maze, and Pidge’s voice was echoing through the room in what sounded like a poor French Canadian accent, and Lance and Hunk were next to Shiro, laughing.

Shiro blinked once, then twice. He carefully brought up a hand to touch at his temple, as if making sure he was still there.

Of all the ways Shiro’s brain liked to betray him, he felt like these moments of skipping time were the most insidious. It made him feel like a corrupted file.

“Shiro?”

Shiro lifted his head to find Lance watching him. His expression was too knowing. It made Shiro’s heart pound hard against his ribcage, like some small, trapped animal trying to slam its way out.

“You paying attention?” Shiro nodded at Keith. Lance’s eyebrows crowded together, but he obediently turned to where Keith was taking easy, loping paces through the maze. He wasn’t fooled, not for a moment. He was indulging Shiro, and that made Shiro’s stomach sour.

It happened four more times. The time skips never seemed to last longer than a few minutes, but it finally made Shiro dismiss the four other paladins from training a little earlier than he should have. Once they were gone, a shuffle at the other end of the training room made him turn to find Allura approaching. She was dressed in the outfit she often wore for training sessions, her hair in its neat bun.

“They did well today,” Allura said. The tone was casual, probing.

“They’re getting to be old hands at the maze,” Shiro said, smiling slightly. “You’re going to have to add something to make it difficult again.”

Allura clasped her hands behind her back and considered the middle distance, frowning lightly. “I think Coran and I have learned our lessons in applying Altean teaching methods to humans. If we make alterations to the maze, I’d need your input.” Shiro huffed lightly. Allura eyed him. “What?”

“You’ve softened.”

“You five are my paladins,” Allura said practically. “I don’t exactly have extras on reserve.” She stepped closer. “Speaking of which.”

Shiro’s shoulder slumped slightly. “Speaking of what?”

Allura gazed at him blandly, not giving him an inch. So she’d noticed. Which was only to be expected; Allura was sharp, sometimes terrifyingly so. If Lance caught on that something was wrong, then of course Allura would see it.

“I lost time again,” Shiro admitted. He’d learned many months ago, painfully, that lying to Allura about this kind of thing rarely ended well for him. Allura nodded, and her expression became calculating.

This, right here, was why Shiro appreciated Allura. Her and Coran’s alien nature wasn’t always obvious; in many ways, their sensibilities and reactions were very sapien, and Shiro was sure that there were a couple dozen thesis projects in understanding that sort of convergent evolution. But an average human would look at Shiro with more pity, with more fear, with more confusion. The Alteans, Shiro had decided, understood altruism and empathy, but they weren’t as steeped in it as humans. They were a tad more ruthless about things, a tad more painfully practical. Allura looked at him like he was merely a flat wheel to be patiently pumped full again, a squeaky hinge to be oiled. Something broken, but not so broken he wasn’t worth the time and work needed to patch him up again. If Shiro had the inclination, he might have taken time to wonder at why he preferred this attitude. He didn’t, though; he doubted he’d like the results.

“Do you want to spar?” Allura asked.

Shiro nodded, and without a word, Allura strode into the center of the training room. Shiro followed, rolling his shoulders.

It had taken Allura a long time to convince Shiro to spar with her. At first, Shiro had declined on the grounds that his Galra arm was an unknown element, that it might do things that he didn’t intend, and that none of them could afford to have Allura out of commission. Allura had dismissed this with a promise that her intermediate combat courses as a child had included opponents much more dangerous that a smallish biped with a fancy prosthetic. Shiro hadn’t know whether to bristle or laugh at that.

Eventually, though, Allura had persuaded him. It took some time for Shiro to adjust to the sessions with her. Sparring with the paladins was different; even with Keith, Shiro was focused on teaching and challenging his partner. With Allura, Shiro had to work at keeping up. And the cognitive dissonance of a hard fight without the looming threat of extermination had been hard to process at first. Very hard, actually. There had been more than one deeply embarrassing breakdown that Allura had handled with her usual tact. But these days, Shiro was able to appreciate that there was something incredibly heady about equally-matched combat that didn’t carry permanent consequences.

He and Allura started out taking lazy swipes at one another, feeling one another’s limits and energy levels. Allura swung things into the next gear when she threw Shiro to the floor. The impact chased the air from Shiro’s lungs, but he was still _alive_. He scrambled back up, feeling as if someone had snapped something in place in his chest.

He and Allura spent almost the next varga sparring, keeping things just hard enough to challenge them, but not much more. Shiro lost himself in the rhythm of tackling, ducking, rolling; in the peculiar sour, though not unpleasant, odor of Altean sweat.

Shiro became aware of others in the room after he managed to flip Allura over his hip. When Allura hit the ground and immediately transitioned to a neat roll, the sound of clapping filled the room. Shiro looked up and realized that the other four paladins were sitting along the far wall, showered and in their civilian clothes.

“We were wondering when you’d get a hit on her,” Lance called out, cupping his hands to his mouth. “We’ve been counting.”

“You want the exact ratio of Allura’s hits to Shiro’s hits?” Pidge added.

“It’s high,” Keith said.

Shiro waved at them dismissively, unable to keep the smile from sliding across his face. Allura levered herself to her feet and grinned at the four of them.

“If any of you are interested in stepping in for Shiro,” she said. “You ought to feel free.”

Lance made a motion like he wanted to raise his hand. Without bothering to look, Hunk reached over to grab his wrist and keep his arm in place.

“Anyway, we’re also here to tell you that lunch is ready,” Hunk said. “You should come. I’ve got something really, really close to grilled cheese.”

Allura glanced at Shiro questioningly.

“Solidified mammary fluid put between two slices of processed grain and fried,” Shiro supplied.

“For the love of—don’t describe it like _that_ ,” Hunk complained.

“I’m sure it will be wonderful,” Allura said. “Go on and eat; we’ll be there in a bit.”

The four of them complied easily. They disappeared down the hall in a bundle of bumping shoulders and drifts of laughter. Shiro watched them go with a hard surge of fondness. They were such good kids.

Allura thoughtfully tucked away stray strands of hair then glanced at Shiro. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

Shiro stilled. He inhaled hard, licked his lips, and admitted in a small voice, “I don’t know.”

Allura nodded, like she’d been expecting this answer. To be fair, she probably had been. A year as a prisoner meant that Shiro had eaten when there had been food and starved when there had been none, and as a result, his ability to read his own body's hunger pangs was wildly off the mark, even after months of freely available food. So Shiro often either accidentally gorged himself or forgot to eat completely. The latter was especially an issue. After the fifth or sixth incident of Shiro letting his blood sugar drop to dangerously low levels, he’d noticed everyone casually asking him about the last time he had eaten. Over half the time, he couldn’t give them a satisfactory answer.

“Shiro?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” He scrubbed at his face. “Sorry.”

There was that calculating expression again. Not cold, not dangerous, just unruffled and practical. “Why are you apologizing?” Allura asked.

Shiro gave her a thin smile. “Pretty sure it’s a basic biological ability to tell when you need food.”

Allura shrugged lightly. “Not from my experience,” she said.

Shiro raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“I once spent several rotations on an oceanic planet with a filter feeder species. They were constantly taking in nutrients from the water. They had absolutely no concept of hunger, or eating for that matter.” She tilted her head. “Never underestimate the sheer diversity of life in the universe, Shiro.” Allura’s expression was impossible to read, so Shiro had no way to telling if she was bullshitting him.

“Did they lose time, too?” Shiro asked.

Allura frowned. “Don’t.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Shiro wiped at his mouth. “It’s just. You know. Sometimes I wish I could go more than a few vargas without…” He trailed off.

“And sometimes I wish you wouldn’t act as if your wounds are personal failings, but the universe is as diverse in its disappointments as it is in its lifeforms.”

Wow. Ouch. Shiro looked askance at Allura, who gazed at him stonily. “Point taken,” he said at length.

“Mm,” Allura replied, not sounding convinced.

Shiro hesitated then exhaled hard. “Look. My… _wounds_ aren’t—they might never actually heal. You understand that? They just might get to a place where they’re manageable, where I know how to work around them. And that’s not okay. Every time they crop up again, it’s another reminder that this is probably my life now. And it’s another reminder that you should have a better Black Paladin. Like you said, this is what you have to work with. So we all work with it. But you deserve better.”

Allura inhaled and crossed her arms. “Shiro, Zarkon’s entire philosophy is that absolute self-sufficiency is the ideal. You’ve seen where that leads. Don’t be a fool and try to emulate him.” Shiro blinked, blindsided by the idea. “So your wounds won’t ever quite go away,” Allura continued. “I understand how that’s a hard idea to bear. But why is it such a terrible thing that you’ll need help? You’re not the first to use a social support system to make your way through life. From what Pidge has told me, that’s the entire basis of why humans thrived as a species.”

Shiro remained silent for a long while. “I’m not trying to emulate Zarkon,” he said softly. Allura’s expression softened.

“I know,” she said, reaching out to pat his upper arm. “That’s why I wouldn’t trade you for anything.”

Shiro found himself smiling weakly back.

“In any case,” Allura said, dropping her arm. “You’ve been working hard all morning, so I’ll say you’re probably hungry. Come on, I want to try this fried solidified mammary fluid.”

“Oh my god,” Shiro said, following Allura toward the doorway. “It sounds ten times worse when you say it.” Allura threw back a smirk.

As the pair of them made their way toward the kitchen, Shiro could hear the clatter of the others already eating. It was a warm, comforting sound, a sound Shiro trusted to catch him if he faltered again.

Some days, that was the best thing he could ask for.


End file.
